“I could take control of your mind, turn you into a simple-minded puppet and have you climb into this bed like a well behaved puppy, Corrine. That is what I can do.”
Cold dread sliced down through her chest and belly as she realized he was speaking the truth. Oh, she knew nothing at all about this weird telepathy stuff, but it was a dead-on fact that he had the power to speak into her mind. It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe he could do what he said. Her heart began to race again at the idea of someone being able to take control of her in such an absolute way. Looking around in a frantic renewal of panic, she searched for the door to the room.
It was really, really far away. A good eighteen yards — okay, so maybe it was just feet — away. Christ the room was big! Or maybe it just felt that way because even the idea of crawling across all that harsh stone was exhausting. Corrine leaned forward, her hands touching the stone in the beginnings of a crawl, and suddenly there was an explosion of crashing steel and groaning wood from the bed.
“Corrine, don’t! Don’t leave! Damn you, you stubborn little—!”
“Stubborn?” Corrine sat back on her heels once more, turning her head to glare at the bed, if not the man within it. “You are chained to a bed, you idiot! My coming up there to keep you company isn’t going to help either of us! Maybe if I can get out of here, I can find some help and we can both go back to our lives. Unless, of course, you enjoy being lashed down? If that’s the case I won’t interfere with your fun. But I happen to like my life out there in the free world!”
“Fine. Have it your way.”
Corrine ought to have realized then and there that there wasn’t even a hint of capitulation in his words.
Chapter 3
Corrine felt herself resolving into an awareness. It took only a heartbeat for her to realize that, not only was she back in bed with her blue-eyed boy in bonds, but she was curled up like a contented kitten across his chest. She tried to push away from him in her shock, but her body did not respond to her demands. She felt exhausted and her hair was drenched in sweat as though she’d just run some kind of a marathon. Worse yet, she was bare butt naked again, her breasts mashed between their bodies.
She realized then what he had done. He had made good on his threat to take control of her actions. Somehow he had seized her mind and forced her to climb back into bed with him. In a sudden and dreadful panic, Corrine wondered just what, exactly, he had done to make her break the awful sweat drenching her body.
“I didn’t do anything,” he snapped out with a scowl. “You’re critically ill, Corrine. Just getting your stubborn little butt back in this bed was an Olympic event.” He dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling, his jaw set with angry tension. “I didn’t want to make you come back like that, but you left me no choice.”
“No choice?” She could barely hear herself. Corrine realized she was short of breath and so damn tired she couldn’t even get a good mad on. “How about the choice where you leave me alone and let me do what I decide to do! You had no right—!”
“I had every right!” he bellowed suddenly into her nearby face. “If you’d just sit still and listen for five minutes you’d understand that!”
“Oh, really?” she hissed out snidely, sliding up against him just enough to put them nose to nose. “Go ahead. Make me understand why you’re chained to a bed like some rabid dog and why you think it’s life or death that I stay with you! I’m listening!”
Kane drew a breath, impatience and temper fueling his desire to hit her with the truth and use it against her. His mind was blind with emotion and need she couldn’t understand. He shouldn’t have had her curl up into contact with him, but he had not been able to help himself. He’d needed her nearness so much. . oh, so much. The feel of her, just the smell of her gave him a measure of comfort, even as it created brand new tortures. It sickened Kane that she had thought the worst of him, that Corrine had thought he’d used his power over her mind to make her obey his need for sex, but maybe that was because the idea had, in fact, crossed his mind several times.
Corrine watched Kane turn his head aside, hiding his face against his biceps for a long, long minute. Her skin almost felt alive with the strange sense of energy she felt radiating from him into herself. It left an odd tasting tang on her tongue. Even in a sea of exhaustion, there was something wildly rejuvenating about the sensation. Slowly the sense of numbing weariness began to fade and a keen sense of perception replaced it. Once again she became acutely aware that he was in a great deal of pain. She felt it was focused physically at the biting raw places where the cuffs held him fast, and yet there was something else, something like a symphony of agony that radiated through him from head to toe.
She sat up as best she could manage, pressing flat palms against his chest as she slowly let her eyes walk over him. His dark hair was damp and curling in a messy collection of rings. His dark skin was as slick as hers; every vein and vessel beneath it was distended to the utmost.
Corrine cleared her throat, her anger fading when she acknowledged that, whatever else he was, Kane was suffering.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she asked him more gently this time. “Why are you trapped like this? Why don’t you want me to find someone to free you? God, I can tell you’re suffering from some kind of pain. Why won’t you let me help?”
Kane looked at her, his crisp blue eyes hot with unspoken emotions she had no access to. Not unless he deigned to share them with her.
“I am being held here like this”—he jerked on the chains—“because right now I can’t be trusted. The pain I am in is transient. It will pass.” She saw his jaw clench briefly. “I just need you to understand one thing, okay?” He waited until she nodded. “There is a special sort of. . of chemistry, between you and me. The moment you and I came into contact with each other, it made something happen to both of us. It made us change into symbiotic beings. That means—”
“I know what symbiotic means,” she broke in tartly.
“I know you do,” he sighed. “I meant to say, what that means for us is that we are each dependent now on the other. You became sick, Corrine, because I wasn’t there to support you. You almost died because of it. Now you are weak and can barely function. You were in a coma until just a little while ago. And you’ll go back into it if you don’t keep close to me.”
“Wait a minute. .”
“No. You can’t think about this now. You just need to go to sleep and rest. In a little while you’ll start to feel better and then we can talk some more. Please, Corrine, just rest.”
Corrine wanted to complain. She wanted to question him about things like: How did he know all of this? Was this real or just some kind of delusion that he truly believed with that unnerving conviction of his? And if this had all started the moment they’d met, how was it that she’d been sick since before meeting him?
But none of those questions made it past the point of thought flashing through her mind. Her exhaustion had rapidly caught up with her and before she could think to fight it, she slipped into a deep, natural sleep.
Or so she thought.
“Hmm.”
“What?” Noah looked up from his reading when Abram made the speculative sound.
“Nothing really. Only, I find it fascinating to watch the mistakes that the young tend to make.”
“If you mean Kane, he is hardly what I would call young. And mistakes are not exclusive to youth.” Noah frowned at that, thinking of all he had learned recently about Demon history. A thousand years ago the Demon race had actually been comprised of two races. Demon and Druid. They had lived a symbiotic existence. Demons could not know the depth of true and meaningful love with a soul mate, without a genetically perfect Druid counterpart; Druids could never know their own power without that perfect Demon’s touch to give birth to it. And, as Kane and Corrine were discovering, once that connection was made, they could not survive apart from one another. The Druid would whither away and die within a couple of weeks for want of the energy of the Demon it fed from, and the Demon would pine for its love, suffer untold depression, and usually seek an end at its own hand or simply waste
